Posts By: microcosm

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Dwelling Portably 1990-1999

OUT NOW! “For the past 30 years, Bert and Holly have been cranking this out on a manual typewriter in their yurt. You’ll find diagrams and notes on how to make tools, portable showers, find seasonal jobs, stay warm at night while Winter camping; hitchhiking and freight train hopping guides; suggestions from people who live in their car, in tents, yurts, tipis, or nowhere at all. And perhaps my favorite thing about “Dwelling Portably” are the personal stories that surround the helpful information.” -Print Fetish

Internship Experience

I’m halfway through my internship with Microcosm.

Before I came here, I got teased endlessly about not being “DIY enough” for Microcosm. I only ride my bike sometimes, I’m not vegan…blah blah. The publishing and distribution part, run out of Bloomington, is actually inside of a house. A far cry from the cubicles and corporate offices my friends are interning at in New York City.

But I love zines. So I came here. So far…I’m super glad I’m interning here, where I can listen to my own music and wear whatever rather than getting coffee and being uninvolved with process.

I’m a magazine journalism major at Ohio University, and we are told day in and day out that print is dying. “If you are to succeed, you must create a personal brand. You must master Twitter, and stalk the internet so that you can make the headlines your status before someone else does.” This is what we are fed in school.

Print is only dying because we let it. But not here. And personal brand? That’s what each and every zine is: someone’s individual gift to all us, something they worked hard on so that other people can be informed, humored, and amazed.

So in essence this internship is simultaneously reinforcing and proving wrong what my journalism professors lecture. It’s a learning experience; what an internship should be.

Though my tasks here usually involve packing orders, counting inventory, folding and stapling zines, etc…I am happy with the amount of input I get to have. I can give my opinion at an admin meeting, I can choose whether or not I feel like making buttons or reading submissions, and nothing I say or do here is judged.

The most important lesson this internship is teaching me, though?

I would rather work in a collective environment doing something myself and others are passionate about than obsessively following every new social network and technology just to keep a career afloat.

If you are in the Detroit area, come say hi next weekend! Steven and I will be tabling at the Allied Media Conference.

Also, if you want to set up an internship or volunteer with Microcosm (which you totally should)- email steven@microcosmpublishing.com and fill one of these out.

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Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall is underappreciated.

Today was notable for everyone that I talked to because it represented the passing of an era; marked by the celebrity deaths of Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. But it can, and arguably, should point to the larger truth: people that are important to our lives are sick all around us, all the time. Most of the last two years is memorable to me because of the unbelievably number of deaths in people that were close to me; people I grew up with, people I met on tour and kept in touch with, people that I respected mutually, my friends’ kids, my dad, former roommates, plenty of friends’ parents, people who I had toured with, people I wished I had toured with, people I would have loved to have known better. There are plenty of situations I don’t even want to think about.

It seems that I can’t go for a week without the news of another friend passing away. Most recently it was Samantha Dorsett, who Chris wrote about raising money for a month or so ago. I didn’t know Sam as well as many but the sheer number of communications going through me about this huge loss have triggered something new in me. And I’m trying to think of a way to commemorate Sam and the importance of supporting friends in the releasing of the Plan It X DVD.

With SICK coming out last week, the stars were aligned in a rare moment of clarity.

Even the internet hoax of Jeff Goldblum’s death overshadowed the public consciousness and stole more of the spotlight that could have gone to basic community support.

overworked

We all have innumerable friends suffering from crippling physical, mental, or emotional health problems. And we are all busy. But I’ve heard far too many times about the situations of neglect that people fall into when they are disabled in some fashion. They aren’t as fun to hang out with so they get ignored.

I’d like to hear about someone receiving more support than they expected or hoped for. I’d like to hear the success story of those whose will and spirit improved so much through support from their community.

I’m tired of hearing denial of the suffering of our peers (“She’s making it up to get attention”). It’s time to take it seriously; even and especially from people that ARE trying to get our attention.

Now is the time to visit your troubled, in pain, or sick friend.

That, to me, is what punk was always about.

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Sick: A Compilation Zine on Physical Illness

Sick collects peoples’ experiences with illness to help establish a collective voice of those impacted within radical/left/DIY communities. The zine is meant to be a resource for those who are living with illness as well as those who have not directly experienced it themselves. Contributors discuss personal experiences as well as topics such as receiving support, providing support, and being an informed patient. These writings are meant to increase understandings of illness and further discussion as well as action towards building communities of care.

Xerography Debt #25

Xerography Debt is back with issue #25 featuring more of the beloved “review zine with perzine tendencies” wherein your favorite zine writers become zine reviewers, columnists, and news hounds! 64 pages of new zines to fall in love with, collect obsessively, and tell your friends about. They want more zines to review for future issues! We know you are out there! Now you should send it to: Davida Gypsy Breier / PO Box 11064 / Baltimore, MD 21212 USA

Best of Intentions

Second edition out now! This 288 page tome collects the entirety of Avow zine issues #11 through 16 and selected entries from the first ten issues as well. Avow is a collection of artwork and stories with a few nods graphically to Aaron Cometbus and a lot of original ink drawings. He has done unique artwork for Glass & Ashes, The T4 Project, Submission Hold, Against Me!, New Bruises, Razorcake, and plenty more. His stories cut into the darker side of life growing up in a small coastal fishing town and the mischief that ensues. He is reminisces about the days when demo tapes were commonplace and CD-Rs were non-existent, puts a good spin on his tales of figuring out how to obtain his next meal, and learns a lot from society, the hardcore community, and college that he employs into the analysis in his writing. While relentlessly self deprecating, Keith is a great storyteller and does a good job of deeply probing his brain to share these stories.

In Search Of The Lost Taste

OUT NOW! Joshua Ploeg’s (Warm Streams, Behead The Prophet, Mulkiteo Faeries) cooking blows my mind so much that a secret door opens in the back of my head and white doves, musical notes, and winged horses fly out. His cooking is transcendent: Dangerous, strange and perfect. It¹s full of colorful tastes that explode in your mouth like Pop Rocks ­flavor combinations you never thought possible. Crazy alchemy. Freaky magic.
Joshua’s the Traveling Chef; you make an appointment, he shows up at your house with a load of groceries, makes an incredible multi-course vegan meal using your pots and pans, and then he’s gone like the Lone Ranger riding into a big Texas sunset.
Joshua’s been in a bunch of hardcore bands and he brings all the good things punk rock gave us: risk, passion, creativity, and weirdness; then he applies them to his meals. I randomly lucked into one of his dinners last year. I usually eat really fast and mindlessly, but I had to take this one slow and let all the flavors develop and do their respective stuff. Each had its own distinctive note ­ its own voice that rang out to let it be known that it was something special and unique. It was an experience in the finest sense of the word.

Snakepit 2008

OUT NOW! “Snakepit is the visual embodiment of DIY punk as it unfolds in its three panels, a day at a time. Much like life itself, on the surface-and to the casual observer-none of this may look like much. Ben sits around, eats buffets, gets high, plays in bands, and works at a video store. Each of Ben’s days has an accompanying soundtrack song. Music’s definitely important to Ben, but the true driving force is the people he meets; what beats in his friends’ hearts, and not merely what’s on their t-shirts. Pushing around all the edges, like pieces of paper cut out and carefully rubber cemented into place, are real snapshots of life-as-its-happening. And when the watershed days do come – Ben finds long-term love this year – they resonate even deeper.” – Todd Taylor, Razorcake

Doris: An Anthology 1991-2001

New edition out now! Cindy writes her zine, DORIS, like she is figuring out the human condition. She makes writing about the simplest and most common things – playing music, childhood, cooking, or sex, resonate with universal understanding. She helps us make sense of more complex things like the satisfaction from doing useful work, natural curiosity, the ability to use logic, gender dynamics, introspection, the need for challenge and change, combating depression, and creating art and literature. She shares and explores the emotions that go along with having an abortion, rape, dealing with the death of family, or sexual harassment in a context that is enlightening and personal, feeling like a close friend opening up to you. What’s most impressive though is that she relates these things into every article in her zine seamlessly.

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